


Fireworks

by sparxwrites



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Bonding, Fireworks, Fluff, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 22:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1959177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We’re gonna be doing fireworks tonight,” says Tucker, a little too fast, blurting it the minute Wash opens his front door and peers out into the hallway, wondering who the hell is calling on him early afternoon. It’s not as if he has many friends, after all. “Me and Junior.”</p>
<p>(In which Tucker just wants to do something nice for his kid, and Wash reluctantly has to admit to himself that he's kind of lonely.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fireworks

**Author's Note:**

> so i’m currently working on a red vs. blue apartment block au (because that’s never been done before) where wash and tucker are neighbours. i wanted to have this scene in it, but it wouldn’t fit anywhere. so here, have it as a little dumb standalone thing. apologies for the shitty ending, i ran out of ideas.

“We’re gonna be doing fireworks tonight,” says Tucker, a little too fast, blurting it the minute Wash opens his front door and peers out into the hallway, wondering who the hell is calling on him early afternoon. It’s not as if he has many friends, after all. “Me and Junior.”

Wash blinks – as eternally tired and rumpled-looking as always – and looks down at the small child at Tucker’s side. Junior blinks solemnly back at him, one hand clutching a small aqua blanket with his thumb in his mouth, the other clinging tightly to his daddy’s fingers. He’s a few shades paler than his dad, hair a tight fuzz close to his scalp as opposed to Tucker’s messy bundle of dreads, but they’ve got the same peculiarly grey eyes.

It’s sort of ridiculous he’s only just noticing this now, considering how many times he’s found the toddler escaped in the hallways and returned him to the right apartment, but he’s never really looked before

“Okay?” he says, not quite sure why Tucker’s telling him this. Belatedly, he realises Tucker may have been trying to invite him to go with them, as unlikely as that sounds.

Looking even more awkward, not quite meeting Wash’s eyes, Tucker continues, “Just- y’know, checking you’re okay with it? Because Church kicks my ass if I don’t warn him when we’re blowing things up.”

Church. The surly guy who lives across the hall from them and seems to spend most of his time shouting or complaining. An ex-military guy, like him.

It all falls into place.

“Oh,” says Wash, gratitude and embarrassment mingling in his voice – gratitude because they thought to ask, embarrassment because he shouldn’t fucking _need_ them to. The way loud noises still make him jump, flashes in the corner of his vision still make him flinch, drives him mad. “Because- the bangs, right.  Yeah, that’s, that’s fine. I’m pretty good with that sort of stuff.

_Pretty good_ because he hasn’t had a flashback in three weeks. _Pretty good_ because his psychiatrist says they’re making progress, although the guy still gives him the creeps. _Pretty good_ because Carolina let herself into his apartment the other day and snuck up behind him, and he just barely managed not to stab her.

(He’s managing, okay. Shut up.)

He smiles, the expression feeling awkward and vaguely unpleasant on his face, twisted and closer to a grimace. The scar that tugs at the corner of his lip probably doesn’t help and Wash feels the sudden, irrational urge to cover his face. “Thanks for asking, though,” he says instead, hoping the pair of them will leave so he can shut the door, go back to hiding in his empty apartment alone.

Junior tugs on his dad’s fingers, blinks up at him without ever removing his thumb from his mouth, and Tucker sighs. “Junior wanted to tell you that you’re invited, too,” he says, a little awkwardly. “Because of the whole rescuing him thing.”

For a second, Wash is tempted to point out that Junior is the one that lets himself out of the apartment and makes regular bids for freedom to the big wide world beyond the elevator at the end of their corridor, and he certainly doesn’t seem to appreciate being rescued when Wash inevitably stops him and returns him to Tucker. But only for a second.

“Uh. Okay. Thanks. I’ll… see if I can fit it in.” As if he’s got some kind of busy social schedule, and doesn’t already know that tonight holds reheated takeaway and flicking through television channels in absent dissatisfaction.

(Carolina stop visiting without arranging it a week in advance after the knife incident. She’s the only one left that he knows, now. There’s no chance of unexpected social calls.)

“Bow chicka wow wow,” says Tucker, almost instantly, like he can’t help himself.

Wash shuts the door in his face.

-

He does come down, in the end. Curiosity, boredom, and the hope that actually being able to _see_ the fireworks will ease the urge to flinch for his gun with every bang and flash force him out of his apartment and down several flights of stairs – the elevator’s out of order, again – into the small, scrubby patch of grass out the back of their apartment block that they call a garden.

Both Tucker and Junior are there and there is, thankfully, a pause in the explosions. Tucker’s swearing under his breath to himself, bent over a box of some kind and trying to set light to a fuse; one of those one-man-fireworks-show things, Wash assumes, one fuse that sets off a whole sequence of different lights in the sky.

Junior’s several feet away from his dad, and wearing a pink tutu. There’s a handful of daisies poked into his hair, grass liberally scattered on top of it and falling off with every head movement as he cranes his neck back to watch the next round of fireworks go off. His eyes are wide, sparkling in the flashes of colour across the sky, and Tucker smiles crookedly in greeting as he steps back to admire the show and notices their new arrival.

“We watched Tangled the other day for the first time,” he says, voice slightly raised over the sharp crack of another firework exploding across the sky as he gestures to Junior’s unusual attire, catching Wash’s sideways glance at it. “He’s a little bit obsessed at the moment.”

“Ah,” says Wash, and he doesn’t quite smile but his eyes soften slightly. It’s the closest Tucker’s ever seen him to expressing an emotion other than tiredness, which seems to be his default setting, or irritation, which seems to be his default setting around Tucker. “Rapunzel, right.”

Tucker nods, tries to ignore the desire to lay a calming hand on Wash’s shoulder when he flinches with each firework to explode. The bright lights highlight his face in snapshots, scars thrown into painful relief and then fading down to barely visible again as the darkness moves back in. “You okay?”

(Shots fired. An explosion, somewhere off to his right. Connie at his side, screaming something he can’t hear over South’s yell of , “Motherfucking _cocksuckers_!” and the wet gargle of Maine’s slowing breath over the radio. The stars above them are bright in the sky, a milky swirl across the velvet of it, and his teammate is dying in his ear.)

“What?” Wash jolts a little, tears his eyes from the sky to look at Tucker, and grimaces as he realises that one of his hands is curled into a fist, that his shoulders ache from the tension in them. “Yeah, yeah, I’m… fine.” It’s a lie, but a fairly harmless one. “Still getting used to civilian life, y’know?”

“Yeah,” says Tucker, sort of lamely, because he doesn’t know – doesn’t know anything other than the nightmares he’s had to wake Church from, the nightmares he hears Wash wake screaming from almost nightly. Doesn’t know anything other than from the news and from films that always somehow manage to romanticise the murder of young people in the name of patriotism.

The last of the fireworks die away, leaving Junior staring hopefully at the sky and Wash and Tucker awkwardly avoiding each others’ eyes.

The moment’s thankfully broken when Junior toddles over to them, most of the flowers lost from his hair, yawning widely with the lateness of the hour. “Papa,” he says, tugging on Tucker’s pants, followed by a couple of words in a language Wash doesn’t recognise.

“You gotta use your English in front of other people, kiddo, or they won’t understand you,” says Tucker, a little regretfully, biting back the automatic response on the tip of his tongue. “C’mon, you can do it. I know you can.” Junior’s not keen on talking in front of people in English, but it’s a habit Tucker’s hoping to get him into before he joins Pre-K, at least.

Junior thinks for a moment. “More,” he says, eventually, glancing at Wash with something that looks vaguely like uncertainty. “Wanna more!” His eyes find the sky again, fixed on the stars as if he can somehow convince them to become his own personal fireworks display.

“I think you’ve had enough for tonight, little man,” says Tucker, fondly, scooping him up into his arms as Junior yawns wide and sleepy. His eyes scrunch up, nose wrinkling, and there’s such love on Tucker’s face when he looks down at the little kid in his arms that Wash sort of aches with it.

Junior whines quietly, but doesn’t cry, instead turning his face to press against Tucker’s shoulder with another yawn. “’Kay,” he says, a little reluctantly, voice muffled by Tucker’s skin and the fabric of his well-worn T-shirt.

“Well done. Let’s get you up to bed, then.” The wreckage from their impromptu fireworks display can wait until morning to be cleared up, he decides, especially since Junior’s gone the kind of heavy in his arms that means sleep is imminent.

Tucker’s half way to the door into the building before he remembers Wash, another half-step forwards before he realises the other man’s keeping pace next to him, hands in his pockets and eyes a little hazy.

(Connie curled into the crook of Maine’s huge arms after she fell asleep in the mess hall and he lifted her up, cradled her like a newborn kitten and glowered at anyone who dared to so much as frown at them. Her chest rising slow and steady, face pressed into broadness of one scarred shoulder, looking so painfully young…)

Their walk into the building, up three dank and unpleasantly steep flights of stairs to their corridor – because the elevator is broken, of course, _again_ – is awkward, but not as awkward as it could be. The silence is more companionable than unsettled, and when Tucker stops in front of his door and Wash stops too, it doesn’t seem weird.

“G’night,” says Tucker, after a moment, glancing a few feet down the hall to where Wash’s apartment door is, like he’s not quite sure the other man’s going to go into it. “I guess?” He’s not quite sure why he phrases it as a question.

There’s something in his voice, some kind of invitation that Wash can’t quite read and isn’t sure he wants to – he’s done his share of socialising for the night, hell, for the entire week. He’s not sure he can cope with anything else.

“Night,” he says, hurriedly, offering Tucker a brief smile that doesn’t feel quite as ugly as the one earlier. His scars still pull, his freckles still a spray of blood across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, but the expression feels less painful than it did before. “…Thank you. For inviting me.”

Tucker fumbles with one-handed clumsiness for the door, the other supporting a now mostly asleep Junior on his hip. “You’re welcome, man, y’know?” he says, shrugging. “You’re not half bad company when you take out that stick you usually have up your ass.”

“I do _not_ have a stick up my- behind,” says Wash, tiredly, casting a sideways glance at Junior. Something in him rebels against saying _ass_ in front of a kid, even one that’s snoring quietly with a half-open mouth, drooling onto his dad’s shirt.

Sighing, Wash drags a hand through his hair. “I- I know I can be kinda hard to be around, but- wait,” he says, oh so slowly, eyes narrowing. He pauses, notices his error and the glint in Tucker’s eyes too late. “Don’t-“

“Bow chicka wow wow,” blurts Tucker, and then closes the door in his face with a badly-suppressed laugh.

(It takes them both a few moments, on opposite sides of the door, to realise they’re grinning.)


End file.
